FASHION IN DEFORMITY. 



725 



which is accompanied by some solemnity as a religious feast, is per- 

 formed on approaching manhood. 



But the people who have carried these strange customs to the great- 

 est excess are the Thlinkeets, who inhabit the southeastern shores of 

 Alaska.* " Here it is the women who, in piercing the nose and ears, 

 and filling the apertures with bones, shells, sticks, pieces of copper, 

 nails, or attaching thereto heavy pendants, which drag down the organs 

 and pull the features out of place, appear to have taxed their inventive 

 powers to the utmost, and with a success unsurpassed by any nation 



Fig. 3. Botocudo Indian. From Bigg-Wither's " Pioneering in South Brazil" (1878). 



in the world, to produce a model of hideous beauty. This success is 

 achieved in their wooden lip-ornament, the crowning glory of the 

 Thlinkeet nation, described by a multitude of eye-witnesses. In all 

 female free-born Thlinkeet children, a slit is made in the under lip, 

 parallel with the mouth, and about half an inch below it. A copper 

 wire, or a piece of shell or wood, is introduced into this, by which the 

 wound is kept open and the aperture extended. By gradually intro- 

 ducing larger objects the required dimensions of the opening are pro- 

 duced. On attaining the age of maturity, a block of wood is inserted, 

 usually oval or elliptical in shape, concave on the sides, and grooved 

 like the wheel of a pulley on the edge in order to keep it in place. The 

 dimensions of the block are from two to six inches in length, from one 

 to four inches in width, and about half an inch thick round the edge, 

 and it is highly polished. Old age has little terror in the eyes of a 



* See Bancroft, op. ci(., vol. i., for numerous citations from original observers regarding 

 these customs. 



